Write what you think was most important about your study and results.
Do you use these methods or different methods when writing your scholarly articles?
Once complete, you should have a very good handle on what you did in your study. You should then be able to write the other sections with a clearer understanding of your experiments.
We would love to hear your ideas and comments and discuss them in future articles.
15. Get a good translator if you did not write the original manuscript in English. Then, have the paper proofread or edited by a professional editor or at least a colleague.
For most fields of study, these are the major sections that you need to include when you write an academic article. The introduction is the second easiest to write, followed by the results and discussion.
Make a conjecture about what mechanisms are at work (this may be best laid out in your results and discussion section if it requires major discussion).
Many researchers from non-English speaking countries have been taught to write beautiful, long sentences that are reminiscent of poetry.
Then, get back to work on the bigger sections after the time is up. You may even find that you can actually come up with a good idea or a good phrase to include in one of your main article sections while taking this “break”. Your brain may keep working on the task even when you stop actively working on it, and it's pretty cool when this happens.
Make your figures and tables first before you start writing about your data/results. Then, organize their order. Once you know what their order should be in your scholarly article, you have an outline for your results section.
For example, avoid ‘in other words’ and choose ‘thus’ instead. This is a simple example, but the point is that you want to be short and to the point without fluff.
Answer at least some of these questions in your conclusions. Then, you are on your way to writing why the study is relevant.
This method should make it easy to write about all your data and results. When appropriate, mix in comparisons of your data with prior studies’ results. You should start to see the bigger picture of why your results matter.
9. Write the Conclusions when you are fresh.
Once complete, you should have a very good handle on what you did in your study. You should then be able to write the other sections with a clearer understanding of your experiments.
The conclusion section can be tough. It can be easy to perform a study but hard to make conclusions or discuss why the results happened.
If you cannot write it in English, you need a good translator who will translate it from your native language into English. It should then be edited by a native English speaker who preferably has expertise in your field of study.
According to Kevin Kruse in his book “15 Secrets Successful People Know About Time Management,” 80% of the information contained in an essay can be harvested by reading only 20% of the whole piece. He pointed out that by reading the introductory paragraph, the first two sentences of each succeeding paragraphs, and the concluding paragraph, you can significantly understand both the aim and the supporting points of the whole essay. This is most probably how successful people read bulky journals of essays in a short time.
Being the first part of every writing, the introduction gets to determine whether the reader will read through your essay. Nonetheless, not everyone would find your introduction charming enough, but that depends on the reader’s interests. To make sure that your introduction achieves its purpose of agitating your reader’s desire to know more about the subject, you should follow a well laid out format.
The body of an essay is usually the longest part that’s split into paragraphs. It could turn out tedious and somewhat confusing to the reader when the ideas are not adequately organized. With the body broken into paragraphs, each presenting and discussing a point, it is best to organize each paragraph further to help drive your message efficiently.
Understanding how they skim through essays for quick reading can help you organize your writing in a way that would send the actual message to the readers
Recognize opposing schools of thoughts
Most essay readers are very busy people who care a lot about their productivity. They are often quick readers that want to run through articles and essays in the shortest possible time. Therefore, they are more likely to skim essays and come back to the ones that genuinely interest them.
Your points alone are mere disposable opinions. To make them stick to the reader’s mind, you need to answer the few questions that the point raises, presenting referenced facts from sources that the world trusts with their lives. Depending on the subject matter, credible sources are stringent about the information they publish. As long as people trust and believe these sources, they could as well accept a point that they are supporting.
Clearer, your position may appear, but the points that are supporting your it seem a bit blurry now. You need to help them get your wrap. Creatively reproduce each point — which is the first sentence of each paragraph — in a single sentence followed by a few sentences summarizing the supporting facts. This brings the whole message contained in the body into a brief stand-alone summary.
Most busy and productive individuals include reading in their daily schedule. They try to do that quickly enough to get back on other productive tasks. Thus, they may have very little interest in going through essays with scattered thoughts. I will briefly describe how most of these readers skim through essays. Before that, I would go ahead to explain how to organize your ideas into a scholarly essay efficiently.
The structure of an essay is divided into an introduction that presents your topic and thesis statement, a body containing your in-depth analysis and arguments, and a conclusion wrapping up your ideas.
Example: Signposting This essay begins by discussing the situation of blind people in nineteenth-century Europe. It then describes the invention of Braille and the gradual process of its acceptance within blind education. Subsequently, it explores the wide-ranging effects of this invention on blind people’s social and cultural lives.
You can use the checklist below to make sure your introduction does everything it’s supposed to.
- It gives your writing direction and focus.
- It gives the reader a concise summary of your main point.
More examples of essay introductions
Without a clear thesis, an essay can end up rambling and unfocused, leaving your reader unsure of exactly what you want to say.
You have a strong introduction - now make sure the rest of your essay is just as good.
Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein is often read as a crude cautionary tale. Arguably the first science fiction novel, its plot can be read as a warning about the dangers of scientific advancement unrestrained by ethical considerations. In this reading, and in popular culture representations of the character as a “mad scientist”, Victor Frankenstein represents the callous, arrogant ambition of modern science. However, far from providing a stable image of the character, Shelley uses shifting narrative perspectives to gradually transform our impression of Frankenstein, portraying him in an increasingly negative light as the novel goes on. While he initially appears to be a naive but sympathetic idealist, after the creature’s narrative Frankenstein begins to resemble—even in his own telling—the thoughtlessly cruel figure the creature represents him as.
Particularly in longer essays, it’s helpful to end the introduction by signposting what will be covered in each part. Keep it concise and give your reader a clear sense of the direction your argument will take.
- Starting with a quote
- Using a rhetorical question
- Stating a fact (EssayPro, 2017)
- The thesis statement must present the main idea of the paper
- The thesis statement should neither be a question nor a fact, instead, it should reflect the point of view of the student
- The thesis statement should answer your research question
- The thesis statement must carry with itself an element of surprise which makes it engaging and interesting.
- The thesis statement should be easy to understand and clearly defined. (Whitaker, 2009)
Depending on the instructor and the course a student undertakes at the university level, there can be three possibilities when it comes to deciding the topic of an academic paper. The first possibility is that the instructor allows the student to decide his/her topic. The second possibility is that the instructor provides the student with a set of 4-5 topics/prompts, from which he/she is required to make a choice. And the third possibility is that the student is provided with one topic and is required to write the paper on that topic itself.
There are three sections of the academic paper- Introduction, Body, and Conclusion. Making an outline of the paper helps the student to understand what points/information should be included under what section of the academic paper.
Websites for Academic writing further reference
The revision of any paper involves two steps- editing and proofreading.
The following points must be kept in mind while preparing a thesis statement-
- Giving a brief introduction/background for the topic
- Providing definitions of keywords
- Presenting the thesis statement
- Outlining the main points that will be covered the academic paper (Ling, 2009)
It is possible for some papers to have a single purpose and for some to have a combination of the two. However, before writing the paper, the purpose must be made clear and the flow of the arguments, evidence, and information must be presented accordingly. (Whitaker, 2009) Identifying the purpose allows the writer to define what exactly his/her paper is set out to achieve.
The revision of any paper involves two steps- editing and proofreading.
There are broadly three points for consideration. The first point of difference is the objective. Academic writing is essentially used for writing reports, research papers, abstracts, and conference papers. However, everyday writing can be used for journals, newspapers, diaries, emails, and so on. The second point of difference is the language and grammar. Academic writing makes use of formal and objective language without any slang and contractions. On the other hand, everyday writing is more relaxed and can make use of semi-formal/informal writing, contractions, and slang. The third and last point of difference is the citations and referencing. Academic writing must always make use of references and citations, however, everyday writing need not necessarily make use of them. (Hasa, 2016)
The body of the paragraph includes ideas that support the thesis statement. (EssayPro, 2017)
The student must find information sources that fit well into the categories of- Introduction, Body, and Conclusion. Since it is possible that through the course of writing, the emphasis is steered into another direction as compared to the original plan, the student must continue researching and finding relevant sources.
About Stuti Banga
Whitaker, A. (2009). A Step-by-Step Guide to Writing Academic Papers [Ebook] (pp. 2-7). Bratislava, Slovakia: City University of Seattle. Retrieved from http://www.vsm.sk/Curriculum/academicsupport/academicwritingguide.pdf
Researching for academic papers also brings about the question of finding credible sources. Some credible sources include- academic journals from Jstor, Google Scholar
Even though this paper aims to provide a basic introduction of the different facets of academic writing, a student can make use of the following sources to develop more knowledge and understanding-
The first line of the academic paper should be engaging and should immediately spark the interest of the reader. Some strategies for doing so are-